by Dan Hampton
Nothing.
All around, people were bustling about their business, most with the weary determination and slightly angry expression common with travelers these days. Families pushing strollers annoyed a stream of men of men in suits. Others waited behind the security ropes for friends and blocked everything with their enthusiastic hugs. People with their faces glued to iPhones walked into one another and the furniture. It was a never-ending stream of interesting humanity; where else but an airport could you see Caribbean dreadlocks mingle with robed Buddhist monks?
Glancing at his watch, the Sandman stood and took a last look around. His train was due in eleven minutes and it was just past 11:30 in Texas. Nothing was being reported yet and he managed a small smile. Finishing his coffee, he picked up the bags, and walked behind the Information desk to the escalators leading down to the trains.
As he disappeared into the crowd the TV monitor changed to display the Breaking News banner—
MURDER IN TEXAS
Chapter 15
“I want another one.” Axe drained his margarita and stood up.”
“You’ve got salt on your lips.”
He wiped his mouth and paused. Benny’s was hopping on a Saturday night. Shorts and tight, brightly colored skirts were everywhere as the girls circulated. Axe noticed that none of them seemed to be alone—they all had at least one friend with them. The men, on the other hand, were mostly alone. Leaning against the bar, watching the girls, and drinking beer. There were very few couples like him and Karen Shipman. Not, he reminded himself, that we’re a couple.
She looked amazing.
The sundress wasn’t cut low enough to be slutty, but it was low enough to be interesting. Very interesting. He could just make out her thighs and was pleased to have his suspicions confirmed. Flawless skin and the type of smooth, long muscles that very fit women seemed to possess.
“If you’ve finished staring I’d like another drink too,” she said dryly. She wasn’t even looking at him, just gazing out over the beach toward the water.
He swallowed hard. Modesty, denial, or bravado. The situation called for one of them. Fast. Flashing a grin, he decided on bravado. “No worries . . . be right back.”
That earned him a frosty glance, so he left. Sighing, she watched waves rolling in and people strolling along the beach. She was a bit dismayed to be interested in this man, and hadn’t made up her mind about it. Physically, he was impressive. He was handsome, but not pretty, and very athletic without being overpumped like many men. He’d made a few comments in casual conversation that had revealed a considerable intellect and a surprising range of interests. This, of course, was usually hidden behind a nonchalant and infuriating facade.
She’d been down that road before and swore to never do it again. For all their talents, most fighter pilots were notoriously difficult to live with. There was also their strange love affair with the damn airplanes, not to mention the constant strain of knowing he could be killed at any time. No, Karen told herself. Never again.
As she shifted on the stool she saw the man sitting next to her from the corner of her eye. He was wearing a dark blue Hawaiian-type beach shirt and tan shorts. Startled, she leaned away.
“I’m not interested,” she said politely but firmly. “I’m here with someone.”
Middle-aged and tan, the man had prominent cheekbones and dirty-blond hair, and was calmly appraising her with a pair of hazel eyes. Leaning his thick, muscular forearms on the table, he gave a little grin. “You may be here with Axe, but you’re not here with him.”
It clicked. This was Dan Morgan, ex-fighter pilot and mercenary. How long, she wondered, had he been watching her?
“What makes you think so?”
He smiled again and she noticed it was only with his mouth. The eyes didn’t change.
“I know what an interested woman looks like.”
“Apparently not.”
“There’s one right in front of me.”
“I’m not his date, Colonel Morgan. Or yours.”
He leaned back, crossed his arms and yawned. “So. I see Air Force officers have gotten better-looking there, Major Shipman.”
“Karen is just fine. Thank you . . . I think,” she added. This man made her feel strange. Not threatened exactly, but on edge. He was looking directly into her eyes, and unlike most men, not stealing glances at her legs or breasts. She noticed a scar that ran down from his hairline past his left cheekbone.
Just then two twenty-somethings wandered by and one of them glanced at her, stopped and looked again. Both had the shaggy, casual beach-bum look—like high-school boys who had gotten older and done nothing special with their lives. The bigger one grinned and weaved over to the table.
“Hey.” By way of a greeting. He leaned over on his elbows and looked at her, ignoring Morgan.
Exhaling a bit, she shook her head slightly and stared past the man. He hiccupped and tried again. “Nice evenin’. You wanna drink?”
“Only with humans.”
He blinked. “Whazzat mean?”
“Means get lost. Go back to the primate cage where you belong.”
Blinking again, he lost his stupid grin. “Pri . . . primary age . . . what?”
“Just go, moron. No one here’s interested.”
He straightened up with that slow deliberateness common to drunks and jerked a thumb toward Morgan. “C’mon baby, you can’t hang out with your dad all night.”
She never saw the pilot move, but suddenly his fist dropped over the drunk’s right hand, jamming the knuckles together. The man’s eyes gaped open and he bent forward, but Morgan just squeezed harder.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? So here’s what you do.” A nasty little smile crossed his face. “Apologize to the lady for being a jackass.”
“I . . . no . . . I just . . .”
Karen saw the muscles on Morgan’s forearm contract, and the drunk’s eyes widened with pain.
“Sorry!” he managed to gasp. His friend staggered over to see what was happening.
“Now apologize to me for wasting my time and interrupting my drink.”
The man twisted a bit and tried to pry his hand loose, but Morgan added pressure so he stopped, wheezing with pain.
“Hey man . . . what’s goin’ on?” The other one finally figured out that all wasn’t well.
“S . . . sorry,” he blurted out.
Just then Axe appeared next to Karen, took in the situation, and sighed. Some things never changed around here.
“Leggo of ’is hand, man!” The other drunk snarled. “He just wanted to buy the bitch a drink. What’s wrong wi—”
Axe grabbed a fistful of long hair and slammed the man’s face into the table. He immediately released him and let the guy fall to the ground. Morgan wrenched the other man’s thumb straight back, dislocated it and let him go. Yelping with pain, the drunk stepped back, tripped over his friend and went down. Predictably, two bouncers in black T-shirts materialized almost immediately.
“What happened?” one demanded.
“Don’t know.” Axe shrugged his shoulders and sat down. “I think they’re drunk and fell over each other.”
The older bouncer took in the pretty woman and two well-dressed men, who seemed completely disinterested. The drunks on the ground were stirring and one moaned, “My hand . . . it’s broken.”
“Okay. We’ll take care of it.” He nodded at his partner. “Sorry for the trouble, folks.”
“Oh, no trouble at all.” Axe was the picture of innocence and Karen Shipman stifled a smile.
“He broke my fuckin’ hand!”
“C’mon you two. Leave the paying customers alone.”
“But . . . but . . .”
As they were led off protesting, Karen quietly thanked Morgan.
He shrugged. “Bad manners piss me off. Didn’t want to interfere if they were your type though.”
“Hardly. You don’t take much pushing, do you?”
“None at all. Never saw the point.”
Doug Truax sat down and stared at the other pilot. “Nice of you to come.”
“Your message was . . . intriguing. Besides”—Morgan shrugged—“Langley didn’t really leave me much of a choice.”
“Price you pay for being allowed back here to live.”
“True enough. So.” He glanced at Karen Shipman. “What’s it all about?”
She met his gaze and sipped her drink. “How many top-tier aviation mercenaries do you think are still operating?”
“Straight to the point, huh? Maybe five.”
“Including you?”
Dan Morgan smiled. “I’m retired—remember?”
“Right. Do you know them all?”
“Of them all. Personally, I knew three. Timo van Oste, Willie Reinholdt, and Charles McCallum.” He looked at both of them. “But Langley is aware of all of this. So what do you really want?”
Shipman and Axe exchanged glances and Truax shrugged.
“Okay. Cards on the table—we want their fixer. Or fixers.”
“Why?”
“We weren’t told why. The information is just needed.”
Morgan was expressionless. “So guess.”
She took another sip and looked directly back at him. “I’d say that someone in our government may want to contract with one of these men.”
Morgan crunched on an ice cube and was silent. Perfect horseshit, he knew. She was telling half a truth like all good operatives. After all, it had to sound convincing. Langley, at the highest levels, knew all about the fixers and had used them in the past. No, this was about Taiwan. Either they thought he knew something or could put them onto someone who did.
“Mr. Morgan—I answered you.”
“And it was certainly an answer.”
“So can you help us?’
He considered that. Three years ago, when he wanted to come back to the United States to live, he’d agreed to “assist” from time to time in areas that concerned his expertise. As she’d said, that was the price of his residence. Parroting back information that other branches of the same government already knew was hardly betraying anyone.
“Emil Mousa has the most extensive connections. Geoffrey Whyte is the most expensive.”
“And who is the best? I mean, if you were at the top of the food chain, who would you use?” Karen asked.
“I was at the top of the food chain.”
“So?”
“Rama Buradi.”
“How did you contact him . . . or vice versa?”
“Email. But the address I have wouldn’t work any longer. He always changed every few months.”
“Did he have a base location, someplace he worked from or returned back to regularly?”
“I don’t know. He had a place in Jordan, but I’ve no idea how permanent it was or if he still uses it.”
They all sat for a few moments. The band was playing Buffet’s “Cowboy in the Jungle” and the waitresses darted among the tables as the crowd grew. The warm, salty breeze floated in off the water as the evening tide began crashing in.
“Who else used Buradi?” Axe asked.
Ah, Morgan thought, but kept his face neutral.
“Van Oste, for one.” No conflict there. The Dutchman was a prick.
“Anyone else?”
Morgan shook his head. “I couldn’t say. It’s not a business that uses message boards or takes out ads.”
“Did you ever hear of any other Americans in this line of work?”
Morgan yawned. “Can’t say that I did. Not flying anyway.”
“Well we did. Or at least pretty good rumors to that effect.”
“If that’s true, what do you need me for?”
“Verification.”
“Just told you I didn’t know of any Americans.”
Karen smiled. “Mr. Morgan. I find it a bit hard to believe that we would have good intel on an American in this business and you, who were intimately involved, wouldn’t have at least heard a murmur or two.”
“Intimate involvement is no guarantee of an information exchange.” He smiled back. “You ought to know that by this point in your life.”
Touché. Axe glanced at Major Shipman to see how she’d handle it, but Karen was unfazed. “No guarantee of performance either.”
Ouch. But Morgan only chuckled.
“Need I remind you,” she continued, “that your . . . status . . . here in America depends upon your cooperation.”
Morgan leaned back and met her eyes. “No, you don’t need to remind me.” After a few moments he sighed. “All right. There was a rumor. He was very high end. Remember the Iranian research facility outside Tabriz that just vaporized? Or the attack on that Israeli airfield that nearly started another Mid East war?”
“Him?”
“That’s the rumor. He also was believed to have done some work in Africa for the Nigerians . . . killing off Boko Haram.”
“You were there too. So how is it you never met?”
Morgan shrugged. “I was working for our Department of Defense. He was rumored to work for the Nigerian military. If he did exist, I never met him.”
“Any name?”
“You must be joking.”
“Well, then how was he referred to?”
“The rumor was about the ‘Sandman’ . . . they supposedly called him that because he put people to sleep—permanently. But again, I never met him, and if he was real, just because he spoke English didn’t make him American. I believe there is such a man, but he could be British, Australian, or even a Canadian.”
Doug Truax sighed. This was a useless trip. He was certain Dan Morgan knew more than he was telling, but there was no way to get more from him if he didn’t want to talk.
“Can you think of anything else that would help us?” Karen Shipman asked, making small wet circles on the tabletop with her drink. “Anything at all?”
“Just this. If it’s Buradi you’re after, you may find him . . . or someone else may beat you to it. If it’s not Buradi you’re after, if you’re after a professional mercenary in this type of league, then you won’t get him.”
“Who said we’re after anyone else?” Axe replied. “We want Buradi or someone like him.”
Morgan smiled and again it stopped at the corners of his mouth. “If you say so. But if you change your mind I’d forget it.”
“Why is that?” Karen wanted to know.
Morgan stood and wiped his mouth. “Because a man like this finds out when people are asking about him.”
“Well, that would be good if we were looking for him, because he couldn’t really hide from us.”
The pilot chuckled grimly. “You miss the point. He wouldn’t hide from you—he’d come after you. And you’d never see it coming, so forget it. Thanks for the drink.”
With that he turned and walked away, leaving the two Air Force officers staring after him. Weaving through the crowd, he went down the stairs and exited on the beach side of Benny’s. Standing quietly under the stars, Dan Morgan waited and watched out of habit.
His problem was, of course, that he knew precisely who they were after. There were only two men in the world that could’ve pulled that off, and since he was one of them, then the man they wanted was the Sandman. He’d told the two officers the truth—to a point. Rumors about the Sandman had been quietly discussed in connection with several contracts but Morgan had never met the man. That is, until three and half years ago in Africa, when the other mercenary had saved his life for some reason.
Morgan had never known why.
His Super Tucano had been hit by an S
A-18 shoulder-launched missile and he’d gone done in northern Nigeria. Morgan was minutes away from being flayed alive and beheaded by Boko Haram when an OV-1 Mohawk had appeared over the trees like a grotesque dragonfly, spitting cannon shells. Shells that had torn into the scattered jeeps, SUVs, and bodies of the most vicious Islamic insurgents in West Africa. The few survivors had fled back into the villages and Morgan watched in disbelief as the Mohawk came back around and landed along the road. Bouncing over bodies, it had slid to a stop next to his shattered Tucano.
The tail swung around as the cockpit opened and the pilot waved. Dragging a leg, Morgan hobbled toward the plane and managed to scramble up the side. Then he saw the gun. A big Sig Sauer pointed directly at his head. Opening his mouth to yell, he was too late and the pilot suddenly fired three times—over Morgan’s shoulder. With his other hand, the pilot yanked him into the cockpit and fire walled the throttles. Slamming down the cockpit door as they accelerated, Morgan saw two sprawled bodies that had sprung up with machetes as he’d passed them. Twice he’d been saved. Twice in five minutes.
Well, my friend, I did what I could for you, he thought, and slowly strolled down the beach to the next nightclub’s parking lot, where he’d left his car.
Payback.
“He knew.”
“Of course he knew,” Axe retorted. “Wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what we were after. So why would he bullshit us?”
“Grudge against the government. Or he’s just a crusty old guy.”
“Or since he knows what we’re after, he’s keeping the guy’s identity from us.”
She looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Dunno.” He leaned back. “But if—”
Karen looked up. “But what?”
He was staring over her shoulder. Turning, she saw CNN up on the bar’s big screen. No words got through the music and noise but the caption beneath the talking head was plain enough.
TRIPLE MURDER ON TEXAS AIR BASE.
Chapter 16
The Sandman stretched, rolled over, and opened his eyes. The sheets were pressed and the fine Egyptian cotton was cool. Lying perfectly still, he savored the oversized pillows and thought about breakfast. After a moment he rolled over, called room service, and ordered. Switching the TV to CNN, he muted it and yawned.